Bored
by MrsMCM
Summary: Rose is bored... and when she can't find the Doctor, she finds a way to entertain herself. Set sometime after Girl in the Fireplace, but before Army of Ghosts. One-shot, mostly Rose's POV.


_Spoilers: None really, not that I can think of anyway. Maybe an itsy-bitsy one for Girl in the Fireplace, but only if you look really hard, squint your eyes, tip your head at a 45-degree angle, and then read between the lines._

Summary: Rose is bored... and when she can't find the Doctor, she finds a way to entertain herself.

Set sometime after Girl in the Fireplace, but before Army of Ghosts. One-shot, mostly Rose's POV.

A/N: This is what happens when _I'm __bored! Thinking about going back and maybe writing some of the entries... not sure though, and I'd love to know what you think! Con-crit always received with a hug, and virtual cake to anyone who comments! Riss_

Bored...

Rose was bored. They had been sitting in the same spot, the same time, for the past six hours. For the Doctor, that was a lifetime in one era... but yet they sat here... waiting.

Well, Rose was waiting. The Doctor had noticed something wrong with the TARDIS, and rather than tell her what it was, he merely said, "Wait here" and took off toward the back end of the ship.

She hadn't seen him since then, and though she had tried calling out to him, she wasn't even sure she knew where he would be. She certainly wasn't about to go wandering down the hallways, looking for him. Not again, anyway. The first, last, and only time she'd done that, Rose had gotten so lost that she had spent close to three hours trying to find her way back. He'd had to do a full system search to find her, and when he did, boy did she hear about it!

No way was she going to relive that again. So she stayed put in the Console Room, and did as she was told. She waited.

Except that waiting always took so long, and Rose was eager for something, anything to do. She looked around, her eyes settling on the console monitor. Maybe she could find him on there the same way he'd found her. Then she would know exactly where to go, and then maybe they could go outside and explore for a while. The TARDIS obviously wasn't going anywhere for a while, and whatever was broken would still be broken when they got back. Perhaps she could do a little shopping, pick up a few movies and books from this planet. Then, when they got back, he could go off and do whatever it was he was doing, and she wouldn't be so bored...

Going over to the monitor, she took a good look at the screen. Colors and numbers swirled by in a seemingly random and endless stream, broken up intermittently with the circular text she knew was Gallifreyan. None of it made sense, so she tapped a few keys that she knew would bring up the main window.

Then she stopped. She had no idea of what she would need to do to set up a system scan to find the Doctor. Looking at the little icons on the TARDIS equivalent of a desktop, she found one that looked like a magnifying glass. She clicked on it, and a small search bar popped up. Shrugging her shoulders, Rose typed in, 'The Doctor'. A swirly design jumped up to show her that it was searching.

'145,562,230,155,943,002 results found.'

Rose tapped at the console impatiently. Was this some sort of joke? She tried 'Find the Doctor'. 

'643,562,452,188 results found.'

Sighing, Rose settled her herself in for a wild goose chase. She was trying to think of other things that she could use as search terms, when one of the results caught her eye.

'The Doctor: Lost and Found.  
The man I knew has left me, but he is still here. I know he will not dessert me, so I shall not fear...'

Curious, Rose clicked to open the file. A document, obviously hand-written and scanned into the computer's database at some point as an image, appeared on the screen. Whoever had written it had obviously never thought anyone would read it, because the handwriting was nearly illegible.

Or perhaps that's how it was supposed to be, Rose thought as she scrolled down through it, reading the bits of what she could make out. It was a poem, obviously written about the Doctor, and it was clear that it was a love poem. The handwriting was loopy and flowed elegantly across the page, yet with all it's twists and twirls, it was difficult to make out. Parts of the writing looked almost smeared, like water droplets had fallen onto it while the ink was still wet, making the lines blur and run.

At the very bottom, a flourish caught her eye. It was a signature. A very fancy looking signature, like the sort that movie stars develop for signing autographs. And yet, like the rest of the page, there was no way Rose could make out anything beyond a large, rather scrolling "R".

Interested in what else the Doctor might be housing on the TARDIS hard drive, Rose took a minute to run down the hall and grab a stool from the MedBay, before sitting down in front of the monitor. If the Doctor wasn't around, (and she had no idea how to find him) she might as well entertain herself.

Five and a half hours later, Rose heard her name being called with a start. She quickly closed the window she was in, and stood up, tucking the stool under and to the side of the console, out of the way.

"Rose!" The Doctor called again, coming around the corner. He noticed her standing next to the monitor and frowned.

"What are you doing?"

"Just a bit of light reading. Keep myself from getting bored." She said quickly. He opened his mouth, obviously to push the issue, but Rose beat him to it.

"Did you get the whatchamacallit fixed?"

"The what? Oh, the Thermally-Quantum Transducing Fade Resistor? Yep, all fired up and raring to go!" He looked inordinately pleased with himself, all thoughts of her possibly reading his emails gone. Rose smiled and stepped forward to take his hand.

"Excellent, now can we go and get something to eat? I'm starving."

"Sure thing. Say, have you been in here the entire time?"

"Well sure. I mean you told me to wait here, didn't you?"

He smiled, and winked.

"Well, that's a first." He told her, as he shrugged into his long, brown overcoat.

"What is?" She asked, slipping into her hoodie.

"You... actually listening to what I say."

"I listen, I just don't always follow along." She teased, and he made a playful grab at her. She laughed, and took off down the ramp to the doors. He stopped.

"Ahh... you might want to hold on a mo'." He said cautiously, returning to the center console.

"Why's that?" Rose turned. She was already at the doors, and had been just about to open it when she heard the hesitation in his voice.

"Well, the thing is, when I was fixing the Thermally-Quantum Transducing Fade Resistor, I may have altered our current atmosphere."

Rose stared blankly at him. Her brain sort of felt like goo after reading so much techno-babble on the TARDIS screen, and she was too tired and hungry to really bother keeping up. She shook her head at him.

"What?" He looked up from the monitor, a small smile forming on his lips.

"When I played with the whatchamacallit, I think we moved."

"Oh... is it safe to go out then?" She wanted to know. He nodded, frowning slightly at the screen.

"Should be. Or at least, as safe as anything is. Nope, yeah." Rose laughed at him, feeling a little nervous that he might discover just what she'd been reading.

"Well, which is it?" The Doctor looked up distractedly.

"Which is what?"

"Is it safe out there or not?" Realization dawned on his face, and he quickly returned to her side.

"Oh yeah. Safe as houses!" Rose chuckled, and prodded him in the side.

"Every time you say that, we end up in trouble. I think you need a new way of phrasing it." The Doctor considered this for a moment, finally saying,

"How about 'safe as an encrypted file'? Or even, 'safe as not digging around the TARDIS memory banks, reading my personal journals'?"

Rose flushed. She had only meant to scroll through them, to see if he'd mentioned where the Thermal-whatsit might have been, but she'd somehow gotten caught as she'd scrolled down. Her name had jumped up off the page at her, and she had stopped to see what it said.

It was an entry dated the day they'd met, and his reactions to her. It was not an altogether flattering portrait he'd painted, but as she had read on, she'd watched his annoyance fade into affection, then, eventually, into appreciation. It had been wonderful, and sort of romantic, even if she _was_ reading his diary.

"Did you at least enjoy what you found?" He asked her, eyes twinkling. She licked her lips.

"I'm thinking, if they've got a good place 'round here for what would pass as fish and chips, that's what we should do."

"Rose..."

"I'm sorry I read you're diary, okay? And yes, I knew I probably shouldn't have, but I was bored! And I was only trying to find you with that system scan thing you had to use to find me." The Doctor smiled at her, and took her hand.

"I'm not upset with you. If you had wanted to read those, I could have showed you a while ago."

"It's not that. I was just trying to find you. I figured we could grab a bite, and then you could go back to whatever it was you needed to do. I mean, I had been stuck there waiting for you for, like, six hours! Then, when I couldn't figure out how to find you, I stumbled across that, and figured I would keep myself busy doing _something_."

"Oh..." he seemed to think about this, then grinned at her.

"Well, let's get you your fish and chips, and then I'll set you up and you can read whatever you want. Just next time, tell me."

"That's a first..." Rose commented as she opened the door to the TARDIS, beyond relieved that he wasn't angry with her.

"What is?" He asked, following her out into the dimly lit alleyway.

"You...being willing to share your history with me. And by the way, I read what you wrote about that time we went to Egypt... and it _was_ your fault!" Then she took off running, knowing that he would catch up with her when he could correlate the facts in his brain. It took him 2.354 seconds to process what she'd said, before he was fast on her heels.

One thing could be said about traveling with the Doctor, Rose thought with a grin, it was never boring!


End file.
